


Hemorrhagic

by ADeedWithoutaName



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Body Horror, Disease, Gen, Gore, Horror, Physically-close Winchesters, Sick!Dean, Splatter, moc!dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:29:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27307756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADeedWithoutaName/pseuds/ADeedWithoutaName
Summary: It starts with a spot on Dean's stomach, and a fever.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 43





	Hemorrhagic

**Author's Note:**

> I'm only gonna say this once: this one contains some EXTREME gore, so read at your own risk.
> 
> Happy Halloween, everyone!

By the time Dean noticed the spot on his stomach, he'd already been feeling off for a few days.

Said feeling was nothing major. A little achy, a little fluey, a little tired. Like maybe the sleep deficit he'd been humping around his entire life had gotten just a sliver too big again, and that was probably what it was. He never got sick anymore, especially not with the original blueprints for murder stamped on his arm and apparently fighting off anything else that tried to infect him like a tapeworm eating other parasites. He guessed it might have been the Mark itself, but it tended to like stabbing a lot more than the sniffles, and it had even been quiet lately, the wet red tails it had in his brain laying docile and innocent.

So, yeah. Nothing to really be worried about. Until he found the spot.

He didn't even think it was related at first; it happened while he was stripping for a shower. A long one, to try and ease the headache cascading down into his back. Dean caught sight of it in the mirror, a patch over near his right hip, almost dismissed it, went in for a closer look instead.

It was pressure-pink, like he'd had something against it and just taken it off, freckled through with red, darker down towards the middle. It was only maybe about the size of a quarter, and the skin wasn't broken. Maybe it was a _little_ bit hotter than the skin around it when Dean touched it, and kind of sore and itchy, but it wasn't swollen. He figured he'd banged into a doorknob or something, hopped in the shower, and forgot about it.

The steam and hot water helped, but not nearly as much as Dean had been hoping it would, so soon as he was out, he decided to take a Dean Winchester Sick Day. Which mostly meant junk food and shitty TV. He checked around for Sam, didn't find him. Probably for the best. If he really was coming down with something, better if they didn't both get it.

Dean stretched out in bed in hot dog-print pajama pants, switching back and forth between _Dr. Sexy_ and eighties horror movies. At least his appetite didn't seem to be affected. Fried chicken and beer sounded really, really good.

Until, suddenly, they didn't, and Dean was scrambling for the sink.

His insides were hot and prickly, tender stomach cramping its way up his throat as he puked. Then puked again. And again. It had been a while since he threw up like this, seemed to go on forever...he didn't even remember eating this much. Finally, though, there was nothing coming up but bile, and Dean swooped in massive, hitching breaths, drenched in queasy sweat.

He coughed and spat, shaking as he lifted his head to look at himself in the mirror. Which was gonna have to be cleaned, he saw. There had been some splashback. He was pale and red-eyed as he dragged a hand back through his wet hair, tears still gathered wetly in his eyes.

Dean waited until he was sure that there wouldn't be an encore performance, and until he finally felt like he was able to get enough air in his lungs, to step away from the sink. He wanted another shower, but something about throwing up everything he'd eaten from eighth grade onwards had really taken it out of him, and it was either rinse off or clean up his room. With the greasy smell of chicken bones making something fold unpleasantly inside him, Dean knew which one he needed.

He brushed his teeth once the trash was gone and the sink was empty. When he leaned over the sink to spit, his stomach hurt like he was crinkling the skin on a sunburn. He'd forgotten all about the spot, only remembered when he pulled his shirt up.

It might have gotten bigger, he realized as he looked at it. Then again, it might not have. He should have drawn a circle around it with a Sharpie when he first noticed it. He'd seen that once on _Dr. Sexy,_ though he didn't remember now why they'd done it. The color was definitely different, even darker in the center, red mottling down to a bruisy purple. It complained when he touched it, a sick little flare of pain that hit him right in the spine.

"Shit," Dean muttered around the toothpaste suds still in his mouth. If it was a bruise, it was a really, _really_ bad one. Maybe he'd see about Castiel clearing it up for him when he got back.

Goddammit, Dean really hoped it wasn't a spider bite. Dean cringed at the thought of thin little legs fluttering over him in bed, a soft, juicy body between his skin and his shirt, bug fangs sinking in when he moved in his sleep and the thing that had crawled down inside all his layers panicked.

He spent a minute or so slapping away the phantom tickles that had sprung up all over his body thinking about that, then decided he was going to dust and vacuum the whole bunker top to bottom. Just as soon as he was over whatever was wrong with him.

Dean thought he might have a fever as he crawled into bed. Aches were starting to ring in his joints, and the chills that were setting in made him burrito himself in his blanket and comforter. Nothing a good eight hours of rack time couldn't cure, though.

Or ten. Or twelve. He wasn't going to be picky, and he wasn't going to beat himself up for sleeping in, either. Just going to step aside and let his body take what it needed.

* * *

It felt like he'd barely closed his eyes when he was up again, lurching free of the covers, mind scattered and panicked and not sure what was going on until he hit the sink and spewed thin, frothy stomach acid. He hung himself over it, panting, waiting for the jackhammer in his chest to slow down, and glanced at the alarm clock on his nightstand.

"Oh, that can't be fucking right."

When he checked his watch and his phone though, they both matched up with the clock. Nine hours since he laid down and it felt like it hadn't even been five minutes.

He didn't feel any better. Breathing hurt, sinuses raw after their acid bath. He still had the fever. But if it hadn't by now, he figured that sleep wasn't going to cure what ailed him, so he didn't go back to bed despite how temping it was.

Dean washed what was likely too many ibuprofen down with half a remaining bottle of flat, warm beer. Probably not a great decision on either front, but it wasn't like he had a perfect track record when it came to choices. The Mark pulsing dully on his arm was proof enough of that. He'd blame it on his genes.

Dean changed out of his pajamas, soaked so thoroughly with sweat they made a damp noise when they hit the bottom of his hamper. He'd forgotten about the rash again. Deja vu: no idea if it had gotten bigger or not, because he hadn't marked it out the second time, either. He grabbed a pen off his desk and drew a circle around it, one so shaky it was probably useless, but hopefully it wasn't growing. Or if it had been, it was done now.

It was really purple in the middle, thundercloud-dark. When Dean touched it, it hurt, bad enough to have him gasping. And there was more than that.

It felt...soft. Just right there, in the very middle. Like the stuff under the skin was going all loose and mushy.

It could definitely be a spider bite, Dean decided after he looked some pictures up on his phone. The only thing was that it wasn't swollen like most of the examples he saw were. He ran a hand over it to try and feel if it was raised at all, and there was a series of weird, sore little pinpricks, like medical tape tugging on arm hair.

Dean looked at his fingers. Hair, downy to sort of wiry, the kind he had on his stomach. The hair all over the whole...whatever the fuck it was, it was falling out.

Bruises didn't do that. He wasn't convinced spider bites did, either.

Dean stared at the spot for a while, then cracked open the little first aid kit he kept in his room and taped a big gauze pad over the whole thing before pulling on a fresh shirt. He'd take a shower and get it some more concrete treatment once he had something in his stomach.

His teeth felt soft and gritty, mouth tasting like the bottom layer of a landfill. He remembered Sam telling him not to brush his teeth right after eating or drinking anything, saying something about how the enamel was soft and the brush would scrape it right off, but there was no way he could eat like this.

Dean's tongue was painful, gums and the insides of his cheeks feeling like somebody had taken a wire brush to them. Once the vomit flavor was gone, the inside of his mouth tasted like metal. He stuck out his tongue, saw a whole bunch of red spots on a pale background, like the top layer had come off his tastebuds.

He figured it all had to do with throwing up and went to get something to eat.

Walking into the kitchen, Dean's heart said "bacon and eggs," but his head suggested "dry toast and plain oatmeal." He went with his head for once. Even though it was what he privately thought of as a "Sam breakfast," it would be way easier to throw up oatmeal than bacon. He'd also much rather ruin that for himself.

Speaking of Sam and his breakfasts, he came in while Dean was waiting on the toaster, hair in some douchey little knot-thing up near the crown of his skull. Much to Dean's annoyance, he was actually pulling it off. Not that Dean would tell him that.

Sam looked distracted, books and laptop tucked under one arm as he went to pour himself a cup of coffee (something else Dean decided against) and grab a carton of eggs out of the fridge. He gave a little nod to Dean, then did a double take.

"Holy shit," he said. "Dude. Y-you look _awful_."

Dean snorted. "Thanks, Sam. Looking real, uh…" He twirled a finger around the top of his head. "Stylish there yourself."

"No, you look _really_ bad," Sam said seriously. "Are you okay? I mean, I guess I haven't seen you since...jeez, night before l - "

"Actually, I…"

Dean cut Sam off, but then paused, wondering if he should tell him he was sick. Sam was looking kind of pale and tired himself. Dean looked at the books and the laptop, the ink smudges on Sam's fingers and one side of his face. He wasn't sure if he was doing research for Castiel, on a hunt Sam had dug up for him, or if he was chasing his own tail trying to figure out how to scrape the Mark off again. But clearly, something had him skipping meals and losing sleep.

Dean didn't want to be any bit more the cause of that than he probably already was.

"I'm fine," he said. "Just, uh...rough night. You know how it is, comes with the territory."

"Yeah." Sam nodded, then swallowed. "Yeah, I do."

Dean almost asked him if he wanted to talk. But he knew Sam would wave him off if he did, almost definitely. And if he didn't, hadn't they beaten the dead horse on Dean's right arm into a pulp by now?

He could have told Sam about the thing on his stomach. Just mentioned it all casual-like. But it felt like Sam had just barely cooled it with the herpes jokes and Dean didn't want him to start back up.

Neither of them said anything, Dean eating his oatmeal and toast and Sam picking an egg-white omelette to pieces. The bread scraped at the sore sections of Dean's mouth. His teeth twinged as he bit into it.

Maybe the spot on his stomach was some kind of rash. Maybe he was allergic to their detergent all of a sudden, or something like that. Because when he got in the shower, he had to touch it down to lukewarm even though his chills were coming back, because that pink patch absolutely did not like hot water. Or being touched. He looked at it when he took the gauze off, and maybe the pink had spread a little past the pen, but it was tough to tell with how crappy a job he'd done drawing a circle.

It sort of glistened when he peeled the gauze off, like it was oozing or something. There was more hair stuck to the pad, more than he'd realized he even had right there. Even though it hurt, he washed it, figuring that whatever it was, couldn't hurt to keep it clean.

He hoped it didn't spread out any further left. He sort of liked having pubes.

The Advil was wearing off more and more with every second that passed, Dean's fever ticking back up. It was like he had steel wire threaded tight around every joint, making for bright little flares of pain that made his throat hurt whenever he moved. Yesterday's headache was back, and pretty soon he was so cold his teeth were chattering. He was starting to think he actually was heading into a real nasty flu. A good portion of the toast and oatmeal coming up towards the end of his shower just reinforced that.

Dean went to brush his teeth again after he got out, but his mouth and teeth were really starting to bother him. Stomach acid. He settled for just swishing around a couple mouthfuls of warm water. He was thinking about shaving, rubbing at his face in the mirror as he squinted and tried to weigh the dangers of shaving with shaky hands against the discomfort of stubble-itch, when he noticed the spot on his right knuckle.

Pink. Spotted with red. Sore, when he touched it.

Dean swallowed.

He slathered both it and the one on his stomach with some kind of cream he dug out of his medicine cabinet. Antibiotic, histamine, didn't matter, it was on there. Then he bundled them both up in gauze and crawled naked into bed. The Mark pulsed a little, grumpily, then settled back down. It really had been weirdly docile the past day. Wasn't like Dean was gonna pitch a hissy about that.

He'd be over it in a week, Dean thought fuzzily to himself. Ten days, tops. It sucked to be out of commission that long, but it wasn't that much in the grand scheme of things, especially where he was hardly ever sick.

The rest of breakfast clawed its way searing and churning out of him not too much later. At least Dean didn't think it was that much later, he wasn't going to check the clock and risk finding out he was wrong again.

Once he was done gagging, he told himself the streak of red sliding down the inside lip of the sink was just from puking so fucking much.

* * *

Dean wasn't better a week later. Or ten days.

If anything, he thought he might actually be worse.

He still had the fever, joints aching like somebody had popped on a pair of cowboy boots and ground the heel into each and every one. There was a slight bubble in his lungs when he breathed, and his mouth and sinuses were so raw and stripped they bled. It was a toss-up on whether or not he could keep down anything he choked past his swollen tonsils. He seemed to be getting enough not to starve or dry out, but at this point, he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

He had more rashes. (He'd decided they were rashes, because spiderbites didn't do this, according to the internet.) Left ankle, right bicep, left shoulder blade, right thigh, back of his neck, creeping up under his hairline...or where it used to be, at least. He hadn't looked and couldn't touch, but he'd brushed a whole lot of amber-dark hair off his pillow.

The old spots had spread. His right hand was pretty much useless with the way it tingled and throbbed, shot through with twanging weakness, and the one on his stomach had crept up his stomach to his ribcage and over to his belly button. Like crawling mold. The center was black now, or nearly. And he couldn't stand any pressure at all on it, even the gauze he kept there a necessary agony. But the skin shifted when he moved. Like there wasn't anything left in the middle, between skin and meat, but something watery and slick.

It shimmered iridescent when he changed the dressing. Like the scales of grease on deli meat.

Sam knew. Of course he did. Dean had kept it from him for as long as he could, but shuffling around looking like SpongeBob from that one episode where he'd had the sponge-flu or whatever made Sam suspicious, and then it was only a matter of time before he found Dean arched over a toilet or a sink or a floor grate or a vaguely-concave magical artifact while he heaved up everything from esophagus to asshole. Sam was pissed he hadn't told him, but more worried than pissed, so they'd skipped the lecture and gone right into mother-hen mode. He insisted Dean stay in bed, kept him well-supplied with crackers and ginger ale, checked his temperature every few hours. Over a hundred degrees, according to him.

He didn't know about the rashes, though. Dean could keep most of the gauze hidden. His hand, he passed off as knuckles smashed in a slipped gun vise.

Honestly, that probably would have felt better.

He asked Sam about Castiel, about a little shot of Emergen-G, then explained the G stood for Grace when Sam stared at him blankly. Sam said he couldn't get a hold of Castiel, but that wasn't anything to worry about. He was in a pretty remote part of the States, after all. Might not be back within range for weeks. So Dean was stuck stewing in his own juices.

The Mark had woken up, finally It wanted its pound of flesh, but the yearning wasn't as bad as usual, blunted like all of Dean's other urges. Sugar in a dry throat rather than sand. Dean brought up hunting, Sam shut him down hard. Dean didn't push back. Probably better he wasn't out breathing this shit all over other people, anyway.

Dean didn't want to subject anybody else to this, least of all Sam. He'd said that over and over again, forcing it past fits of coughing and vomiting. So Sam was being careful, staying a good distance away, washing his hands. He wouldn't wear a respirator no matter how many times Dean told him to, though.

"Dean, most of our air's recycled, anyway," Sam pointed out, gesturing to the vents. He looked even more tired now than he had a couple weeks ago. "We're breathing each other's germs all the time. If whatever you got's airborne, I already have it."

And that just made Dean feel awful. Emotionally, at least. Physically, he was already like sixty percent sure he was dying.

Dean's back was curved, chest aching, bloody snot hanging from his nose as he coughed himself breathless in bed. He could feel Sam hovering right over him, that special bruise-throb the Mark got whenever he specifically was within a certain range a dead giveaway, and was grudgingly grateful for his presence when the coughing turned into puking and Sam was there to hand him a bucket. He rubbed Dean's back as he rode through it. He was touching the rash on Dean's shoulder, which made the nausea worse, but Dean didn't tell him.

"Maybe," Sam said quietly, once Dean was down to spitting and gasping, "we oughta go see somebody."

"No," Dean rasped.

"It's been almost two weeks, Dean. Your fever's not breaking, and you sound like you're getting pneumonia. You might've aspirated - "

"No doctor," Dean snapped, voice shredded. He spat out a wad of copper-flavored phlegm. He had another nosebleed, kicked off by his latest ride on the Vomit Comet, and he straightened up and tipped his head back the way Dad had taught him thirty-odd years ago. He felt blood running down into his stomach, knew he'd throw it back up later. It happened all the time. He pretended it explained all the red he saw in his puke.

Sam was looking at him, agonized concern practically carved into his face. Dean shook his head wordlessly.

Neither of them were huge fans of hospitals, for most of the same reasons nobody was. Especially not people who'd carried as many lost causes into ERs as they had. People who'd watched two fathers die in hospital beds and nearly lost each other in the same place more than once. But they weren't idiots, either. Dean had learned early how to tell when he had something on his hands he couldn't fix with whiskey and dental floss. Pneumonia and whatever the fuck these greasy, putrid rashes were probably fit the bill.

He just couldn't explain the gut-level _wrongness_ that smacked into him whenever he thought about going to a doctor. About leaving the bunker - hell, even leaving his room. Part of it was the Mark, which he already knew started getting cranky whenever he got anywhere near somebody who might want to try and get it off him. But that wasn't all of it. And what was left over ran a lot deeper.

Dean just wanted to bundle himself back up in the blankets he'd kicked off when he started coughing, watch TV with Sam, and then go back to sleep a little later. Or now, he wasn't super picky. But Sam wasn't giving up.

"Urgent Care," he said. "C'mon, Dean, just a throat swab and a chest X-ray. They've got everything in-house, you don't have to get admitted or go anywhere else."

"No."

"Just the X-ray, then."

"No, Sam."

"Let me _call._ "

"No."

Sam threw his hands up, let them smack down on his thighs, shaking his head. "WebMD?"

Dean shook his own head again. Blood ran down one side of his face, and Sam gave up in favor of going after it with a tissue. Seemed like he could have pressed a lot harder, honestly. Dean had to wonder if Sam was handling him gently because he was afraid of breaking something.

Dean definitely was. He was sitting up to sleep now, because it wasn't easy to breathe when he was laying flat. That was the reason Sam knew about, part of why he thought Dean had pneumonia. But there was something else.

When Dean was on his back, he swore he could feel things starting to collapse inside him. Loosening, further and further. Pieces sliding where they weren't supposed to, soft tears slowly widening...his heartbeat felt almost swampy, and he couldn't make himself believe it was all in his head.

He wasn't stupid. Not _that_ stupid, at least. He knew logically he ought to have gone to a doctor two weeks ago, when the first rash showed up, and he really ought to be going now, if only these marrow-deep instincts weren't too high a hurdle for him to scramble over at the moment.

It wasn't until later, as he was getting ready to sort-of shower, that it occurred to Dean there might be something wrong with him a normal doctor couldn't help with.

He was sat on the bench in the bunker's showers, slowly shedding layers, and when he went to peel the two thick socks off his left foot, most of his toenails came with them.

It hurt in the way pulling out an ingrown hair did, felt about as easy.

Dean stared. Down at where the creeping corruption on his ankle had spread to his foot. His toes were a candle wax mess, sort of squished together, like the flesh was no longer firm. His pinkie in particular was really looking nasty. He could have sworn he saw bone in the spot where the nail had come free, taking a good amount of meat with it.

Fluid was already seeping. He picked a nail out of his sock, almost dreamlike, realized it had come out from the bed on. When he got a whiff, he gagged on reflex. Looked like what he'd thought was just the funk of not giving himself a good scrubdown in a while (since all he'd been able to do recently was lean against the wall under a less-than-warm spray and shiver uncontrollably) was partly these spots on him. The reek of infection, bordering dangerously close to rot.

It wasn't the kind of decay he was used to, though. He'd practically grown up with that graveyard stink familiar in his mouth, clinging to his clothes no matter how many times he crammed them into rattling laundromat machines. Putrefying flesh was disgusting, but it was natural, just part of the circle of life and all that.

This...smelled like it wasn't.

Looking down at the puffy, welling craters where he'd used to have toenails, Dean found himself running his tongue between his front teeth and upper lip without even thinking about it. He found the same scars he always did. A messy row that had been, for a few hours at least, holes that razor-sharp fangs dropped out of and retracted back into.

He touched that line of twenty or so bumps a lot. Just for the reminder. Of what could happen to him, what he could turn into. That what and who he was happened to be every bit as fragile as the thin skin of his gums.

Dean wondered if the nails he'd just lost would grow back as claws. If he was puking because his body already needed something more than applesauce and ice chips. If the rashes were just his skin in the process of changing into something else. This absolutely sucked ass and it was taking forever, but it wasn't like turning into a vampire had been a day at the goddamn beach.

Could be the Mark doing this, he supposed again. He pulled the sleeve of his sweater up, looked at it. The color seemed even uglier than usual against how pale his skin was, and he doubted it was behind everything happening to him. Cain probably would have mentioned something like this, or Crowley, not that he really trusted either of them further than he could throw them. But what was the point of mutating or killing the Bearer? Seemed like he could raise literal Hell with the First Blade just fine as a person.

He tried to think about their last few hunts, what he'd come into contact with, what could have infected him. It was tough, thoughts all ragged with fear and fever, but there wasn't that much there to remember. Ghouls, ghosts. Witches. Nothing contagious, nothing that bit or bled.

He finished getting naked, hobbled into the shower.

But afterwards, he circled back around to the witches. As he was gingerly brushing his teeth at the sink, no toothpaste, bristles ghosting over sensitive rows, and one of his teeth fell out.

He spat it and a good amount of dark blood into the sink, gagging at the taste as it rattled on the porcelain. He looked up, caught sight of his eyes in the mirror. They were sunken, bloodshot. A vessel had burst in the left one, so one side of his sclera was totally red. It looked like it was creeping its way around the iris, the same bloody white as the molar he'd just lost.

Sam chose that exact moment to come into his room with an armload of clean clothes.

"Shit, did you throw - ?" Sam started, then stopped when he saw into the sink. "What the _fuck_? Your - that's a tooth. Are your _teeth_ falling out?"

Dean wiped his mouth, looking at him.

"Think we oughta check for hex bags," he wheezed.

Dean wished he could have kept Sam from seeing the tooth, from knowing about that. He saw the way it made his mouth tight, his eyes wide, face white like anybody who wasn't them catching sight of a ghost. But maybe it was a good thing he'd found out. No way could Dean have tossed the bunker on his own.

They didn't find anything. Dean wasn't sure he'd really been expecting for them to.

"Just...c'mon," Sam said, steadying Dean where he was swaying on his feet in the middle of their destroyed storeroom. "Let's get you back to bed."

Dean had helped more than he probably should have. He just didn't want Sam to have to do it alone, the way he was having to do so much alone right now, with Dean more or less totally out of commission. He probably should have just stayed put, though. Sam had to pretty much carry him back to bed, where he passed out before he was even fully covered up.

* * *

He wasn't sure how much later it was that he woke up, having to take a leak. He climbed muddily out of bed, staggered into the bathroom. It hurt to piss and what was in the toilet looked dark, but a UTI was literally the least of Dean's worries right now, and it was probably just because he wasn't keeping enough water down anyway. Not worth piling it onto Sam's already-aching shoulders.

He'd been trying to avoid mirrors. Didn't care what he looked like, because he already knew the answer was "twenty pounds of shit in a five-pound bag." But he accidentally caught sight of himself as he turned away from the toilet.

The rash on the back of his neck had spread to his jaw, which explained why the hinge on that side felt wobbly and clicky, like it would fall loose if he yawned too hard. His lips were chapped to the point of cracking, sores around his mouth, nostrils caked with blood and snot. He had more freckles. Looked like it, at least, but they were actually little spots of blood under the skin.

_Petechiae,_ Sam had called them worriedly.

It wasn't until he was looking at himself in the mirror that Dean realized he could only really see out of one eye. The other, the one the blood vessel had broken in earlier, was just...red. The space between the cornea and the rest of it was filled with blood, and when he closed his good eye, he couldn't see anything but a filmy red haze.

"We could be at the ER in twenty minutes," Sam said when he found Dean, still leaning on the sink, and took him back to his room. Dean shook his head.

"No." His mouth felt thick and gluey and it hurt to talk. A couple more teeth were missing, aching pits that tasted like dirt and old bone left behind, and he assumed he'd find them later in bed. "No doctor, no hospital, no…"

He trailed off, couldn't manage any more words. Sam helped him back into bed, then stood there staring down at him for a second before he kicked his boots off and started climbing in next to him.

Dean had more energy left than he thought. Enough to panic, at least. "No, Sammy, you - "

"It's okay," Sam assured him.

"But you'll get - "

"It's all right, Dean."

Dean was quiet for a while as Sam slid under the covers, pressed close to him, put an arm around them. Then, awkwardly, he said, "There's a...lot of gross stuff you don't know about."

Sam snorted a little at that. "I've lived with you for three decades, Dean. I think I can handle just about anything by now."

And he didn't comment on the smell, or the feel of Dean against him, just held him as Dean started to cry. Sam was so damn solid against him, so damn warm. He wasn't surprised to see the tears on the pillow underneath him were pink.

* * *

Dean stood under water about forty degrees cooler than he wished it was, head bowed, left hand on the tiled wall and useless right curled in towards his chest to try and keep it from getting wet. His entire body throbbed. Every couple minutes or so, his rambling, jumbled thoughts would circle back around to grabbing the soap, at least hitting up the major areas. But there were aches ringing up and down his legs and zipties around his joints, and he was so goddamn tired.

He guessed he could ask Sam to do it for him. Not like they hadn't already crossed lines that would have made him sick months ago (had he been sick for months?). Like Sam watching him shower. It was nothing he hadn't seen before. Not even the rashes, because he knew about those now and hadn't said anymore besides making a little more token noise about a doctor. Dean would rather have him in here with him than not, so he didn't wind up taking a nosedive and breaking his neck. Even if that was feeling like a better option by the day.

Sam had stepped out for a second, though. Gone to grab something Dean forgot as soon as he told him. Dean wished he'd come back. There was so much he wanted to tell him, so much he wanted to say, but what could he come up with that he hadn't already said all the other times? And how much sense could he really make with his mouth as fucked up as it was?

Dean was distracted when he started feeling sick, mind having wandered off to Castiel. Sam said he kept on calling him but still nothing, couldn't get through, and that jingled Dean's alarm bells even if he wasn't sure how long it had been since Castiel left. Maybe something was wrong. Maybe Sam ought to be going to check on him instead of hanging out here watching Dean fall apart. Sunk deep in that, Dean didn't realize he was going to puke for the millionth time that day until his stomach started lurching.

_Oh, come on,_ he groused inside his own head as he bent over, trying to aim for the drain without overbalancing, _I didn't even eat anything today, what the fuck could I possibly be - ?_

His question got answered half a second later, when dark red splattered the old-timey tile underneath him.

Dean stared at the gory splash, already curling down the drain in the spray of the shower, in disbelief. He'd never brought up that much blood before. It looked like more than a nosebleed could dump down into him, way more, worryingly more. Then he heaved again and brought up something with a lot more substance, soft, meaty tissue pouring out of him in clumps and strings, slapping onto the floor loud enough to be heard over the water. It got wrapped up between his remaining teeth, tasted like a tuna sandwich gone off a week ago crossed with grimy pennies and yet still somehow worse, and that just made him gag again and again and again, eyes watering, whole body shuddering. He wound up on his knees and his one good hand as he brought up more _ohgodwhatthefuckisthiscan'tbewhatitlookslikecan'tbe_ than he ever knew his body could hold.

And for the first time in (days? Weeks? Months?) the Mark was screaming murder bloodier than what he was puking up, but it didn't sound mad, it didn't sound eager.

It sounded afraid.

Dean finished, stopped bringing shit up. He retched dry a couple more times, waited a while to make sure he was done, then forced himself back to his feet, practically crawling up the wall to do it.

He glanced down. Looked like somebody had gotten messily disemboweled in here, and he didn't make that comparison lightly. Knowing what somebody getting messily disemboweled actually looked like close up and all.

"Well," Dean rasped out, so weak he couldn't even hear himself, "that probably ain't good."

He stayed in only long enough for the blood to sluice off him, then got out, patted himself gingerly dry. His rash-covered stomach was black and bloated, kind of at odds with how hollow it really felt.

At least his dick was more or less okay.

He didn't bother checking the swollen mash of his balls, stuck to one thigh even after the shower.

Dean had an image in his head as he rinsed his mouth out, trying to get all the pieces that had wound up stuck between his teeth, and it wasn't one he wanted there. The ragged remains of shredded organs pulsing and dripping inside him, hung off the meathooks of his ribs and spine, trying to do their jobs but missing too many important parts, so just leaking poison steadily into his crashing system.

He knew that wasn't what was going on. He had not just literally vomited up his guts. And if he looked in the shower now, there would only be a little blood there, same as there always was, but he didn't even need to look because he knew.

Dean dragged himself back into bed before Sam returned from wherever he'd gone. The Mark throbbed weakly, tired again. Sam had to have found Dean's biohazard scene, because there was no way he hadn't, and he had to have cleaned it up, because it was gone by the time Dean took another shower. But neither of them said anything about it.

* * *

Dean's bad eye had gone dark, the dead-meat color of spoiling blood. He hadn't realized until he saw it in the mirror that he couldn't see anything out of it anymore, not even red, and there was a faint, dull pounding near the very back of it, though that got washed away in the throbbing tide of all Dean's other hurts. It was sort of swollen and bruised-looking around it.

Dean blinked. His puffy upper eyelid stuck halfway down, and he had to slide it loose with a finger. He stared at himself for a long second then, on impulse, tapped the pad of that finger straight onto his eyeball, jerking it away like it hurt.

It didn't, though. The surface felt cool and tacky and a little soft. And he could see a whorling fingerprint on the cornea now, like touching butter or clay and leaving shapes behind.

"Okay, fuck that," Dean decided, reaching for the gauze.

Sam came into the room as Dean was taping a wad of gauze over his eye, which he hadn't bothered to close first. He didn't comment on it, just set down what he was carrying: a tray of tissues, Advil, water, Sprite, and applesauce. No crackers. Dean couldn't chew them.

"I gotta go out," Sam told him in a rush, sounding guilty. Dean didn't get why he got so twisted up over leaving him. Not like he was ever awake for more than five minutes at a time. "Supply run."

"That a good idea?" Dean turned to eye Sam, literally. If he'd been going to get sick, it would have happened by now, with him sleeping in Dean's bed and cleaning up everything that came out of him. But that didn't mean he couldn't spread what Dean had.

Dean's tongue felt weird, he noted. Numb up in front. Normally, he might be kind of worried about that. At this point, chuck it on the pile.

"I'll be careful," Sam assured.

He hugged Dean gingerly. It hurt anyway, but Dean didn't tell him that. Then he left, and Dean laid down. He wasn't sure if he slept or not, but his fever went back up, because he got hazy and cold the way he always did. Damn thing wasn't ever going to break.

He rolled himself out of bed without realizing he was doing it, limped to the showers. He needed to take one, a hot one, scalding, to warm himself up. He didn't care if the water hurt the infections scabbing most of his body, everything hurt these days anyway. He just wanted to be fucking warm, even if it was the last time.

Dean turned on the water before he sat down to undress. Slowly taking off all his layers, he didn't look at his skin, at his missing hair or nails. He began unwinding gauze from his right hand, unable to remember the last time he'd changed it. A while, considering how grotty it was. Or maybe this crap just did that right away now.

There wasn't a lot of feeling left in the nasty-looking fingers, or strength. When he was down to a few loose loops, his thumb fell weakly away from where it had been smashed up against his pointer finger, down to its natural position. Then it kept going. Drifting further, dangling, heading for a right angle to his wrist, the softened meat tearing and the loose webbing flapping as the split between finger and thumb went deeper and deeper

Dean stared. His heart pounded sickeningly.

Fuck, he thought inanely, his tongue was killing him.

There were oozing fissures between the rest of his fingers, too. His whole hand was starting to splay all the way down to the heel.

Immediately, he started winding the gauze back up, whipping frantically through the motions of it. He had it so tight something that used to be flesh squirted between the layers and the fan of bones ached vaguely, but he couldn't have given less of a shit if he tried.

He didn't bother taking the sock off his left foot.

He got under the water with more than half his clothes and bandages still on. It didn't matter, he was going to be warm. It felt like he'd never had a hot shower in his entire life. He knew he wasn't going to get better, had known it even before half his insides came out his mouth, and he just wanted to stop fucking _shivering_ for five fucking minutes before he croaked. He was doing this no matter what.

Dean changed his mind when the water hit the bare skin of his shoulders.

It was sloughing instantly, the bunker's awesome water pressure a nightmare on body parts that seemed to have about as much structural integrity as a soggy French fry. Skin piled thick against the gauze Dean still had wrapped around his chest and stomach, pieces coming loose. He was bleeding, the rivulets running down him red, but not like he should be. He was hurting, howling pain all along his upper back, but same thing - not like he should be. That was almost the worst part.

Dean slammed against the wall after he tore out of the shower, nearly slipping on his own blood and skin, then sank down, legs giving out before he even hit the halfway point and dumping him on the floor. He groped for the clothes he'd left out here, trying desperately to wrap himself back up with the hand that wasn't falling apart, trying even harder to convince himself that he wasn't touching tendons up there on his back and neck and shoulders. Couldn't feel bone surfacing through muscle gone the consistency of warm wax.

Dean didn't think of himself as a big crier. It wasn't like it fixed anything, and in a lot of ways, just opened you up to more hurt. On the occasions when he couldn't tamp it down, he at least kept it quiet. It shook him to realize he was sobbing out loud right now, big, ragged wails, spit and snot running out of him, the eye under the gauze aching like the tear ducts were about to pop.

Maybe they did, because the pain went away after a while.

There was a little frisson from his right forearm. Barely more than an echo. He didn't even know what the Mark wanted as he stared down at it, shaking. It was bloody as ever, but flat against his skin. Paler, even, than the blackening veins he could see below the surface. Like it was starving, except he knew trying to hunger-strike it didn't work.

Dean had tried cutting it off before. Burning it. One time, rolling high on a tide of rage, he'd even bitten the damn thing free of his arm, but...it never worked. Of course not. It was like a mushroom, the sigil on his arm the cap and stalk. But the real Mark ran through every part of him in a million tiny threads, fiberglass and toxic grit in his blood and stamped on his soul.

But right now. He thought it was weak. He thought it might be dying, just like he was; he couldn't remember the last time it sounded and felt the way it used to. There was something about this shit rotting its way through him that it couldn't drag him back from, and if that was the only good thing that came out of this, he was fine with it.

Maybe he didn't even have to die with it still on his arm and in his head.

Maybe...fuck, maybe he'd even survive, somehow. Some kind of Hail Mary, maybe Castiel would come home in time, maybe Sammy would figure something out, maybe it would be okay, and he _could get it the fuck off him._

For Sam.

It felt like things had stuck to each other inside while Dean was sitting and tore back apart as he stood, but he got to his feet anyway. He forced himself into the shower, back over to the water. And he shoved his right arm under the spray with a yell that sent a ripple of zapping agony through his tongue.

He kept it under as long as he could stand it. The Mark didn't come off. A lot of other things did.

Dean didn't bother turning off the water. He just sat back down, and hurt, and bled.

That was how Sam found him. He didn't turn off the water either, moving to take care of Dean first. His face was tight and bloodless, teeth clamped together so Dean could literally hear them grinding, as he mummified him in bandages. Dean wanted to ask if he was going to pull his brain out through his nose, but it was tough to breathe in the steamy, reeking air.

Sam wasn't drying him off. Probably afraid of how much the towel might peel away.

"Dean...god." Sam wiped at one eye with the heel of a bloody hand. "I-I'm so sorry. I didn't...fuck this, I think we need to - "

He stopped. He had Dean's mutilated right arm, or what was left of it, in his hands. He was staring down at the Mark, looking more like a shitty tattoo now than it ever had. After a second, he wrapped the whole mess up, and didn't say anything else.

"Sorry," Dean said. Slurred, really. His tongue was absolutely not cooperating.

Dean's clothes came on next. Then blankets. Then Sam picked him up the swaddle of him without much effort at all, making Dean wonder how much weight he'd lost, and carried him back to bed. He must have, at least, because Dean woke up there, with Sam curled around him like a mother lion.

Dean wanted to tell Sam to get the hell out of here. He didn't want him to see what was going to happen to him, what was already happening. But when he tried to talk, only the back half of his tongue moved. The front stayed where it was, gummed to the floor of his mouth and the inside of his cheeks. The pieces were still connected, but only by something cordy and painful in the very middle that didn't really feel like getting a workout right now. When he tried harder to move his tongue, something tore loose in the living half and his mouth filled with fetid blood.

Dean decided he was done talking for a while.

* * *

Dean lost what he was pretty sure were his intestines while he was sitting on the toilet, vomiting some out between his feet while he felt the others come loose from the back end. Sam was there, but he couldn't do anything but stand nearby, shaking, then spin away to upchuck himself.

Dean wondered how in the actual fuck he was still alive as the last torn, meaty piece of tubing slopped out of his gaping mouth to land between his feet. His brain swam in his skull, and he was pretty sure it was dissolving inside him, too. Gonna run out his eyes. The one that hadn't sealed itself off in a mat of soft, seeping gore, at least.

Obviously, his mind sloughing to pieces in his head was why he hadn't figured it out before now: he was still in Hell. He'd never come back, and this was just a new kind of torture. He decided there was literally no other explanation as he stood, empty and bloody, and let Sam take him back to bed. He was pretty sure a rib fell loose inside him when Sam laid him down, toppling over to fall sideways in Dean's internal sludge like a tree rooted in filthy ground.

_Creative, Alastair,_ Dean thought. _I'll give you that much._

Or it could be the Mark. It could always be the Mark, the worst part of him, a part only waiting for Cain's touch to bring it alive. But when he reached out to it, probing for the pulsing tumors all along his head, he still couldn't hardly feel anything at all.

Maybe it was sticking around to the bitter end. But, if it was real at all, then at least he was taking it with him.

* * *

Dean went to push himself up. He had no idea where he was going. He just wanted up. But his side stuck to the sheets, and stayed there. The rest of him didn't.

He tore wetly. Stuff started falling out. Dean wouldn't have thought he had anything left in him at this point to do that, but clearly he did, so he lowered himself back down. His joints creaked and groaned and he was sure he felt his shoulder separate, tendons melting free, as he laid back down.

He wished it hurt. He wished he still felt pain. But maybe it was a good thing his nerves were rotting where they lay.

* * *

Dean laid in bed, wrapped almost too tight to breathe. He knew it was to try and keep him in one piece, even if Sam hadn't said so.

Sam laid behind him, close as he could get with so many layers in the way, holding him, and Dean wished he'd known how to ask for this before he got sick. There was a lot, it turned out, he wished he'd known how to ask Sam for.

He hadn't said everything. He hadn't told Sam what he needed to. And of course now he knew exactly what to say, his tongue was gone and his teeth and also, he was worried, maybe most of his jaw too, because he couldn't feel it anymore.

Or maybe that perfect idiot clarity was just the fever and the rapid decay of his brain, and even if he could talk, it would just come out gibberish.

"It'll be okay," Sam whispered. "You did so good, Dean."

Dean could only hear him through one ear. The other was leaking something into the material under him, gummy against his face.

"You're so strong. It's gonna be okay. I'm so sorry, De. It'll all be over soon, I promise."

Dean knew it would be. He wished it wouldn't be. He would take years of his heart struggling to beat in his chest, feeling swollen and waterlogged, and bubbles crackling through his soupy lungs, just to be with Sam like this.

He knew he wasn't in Hell. He'd realized that. Hell wouldn't have Sam in it, not a Sam like this. Not even to rip him away from him.

Dean fell asleep again. Or maybe he was already asleep. His time was blending together the same as his parts were.

Sam was running loving fingers along his spinal cord, kissing the cradle of his pelvis. Dean opened his chest, ribs falling away same as his fingers had, so Sam could take a bite out of what was left of his heart, and the Mark was in Sam's teeth when he pulled back.

* * *

Dean woke up. He felt off.

He figured out part of it when he opened his eyes and he could see out of both of them.

The realizations came thick and fast, sensation slamming into his brain quick enough to make him dizzy, since he'd gotten pretty used not to getting any input from most of his body. He wasn't cold. He could feel his arms, and legs, and when he flexed his fingers and toes, they responded, and it felt like they were all there, curling through moist, ragged softness. When he breathed, his lungs opened easy, and the air didn't scour his mouth or nose.

He was in his room, still wrapped up. It felt like a damn straitjacket and he could feel himself slipping towards panic as he struggled, trying to get free. But he made himself take in a deep breath, really relishing being able to do that without worrying about blowing the bottoms out of his lungs. Then he sat up and started unwinding his way to freedom.

Blankets. Clothing, so many clothes, a lot of them Sam's. What looked like every damn bandage in the bunker, gauze and Ace wraps and freaking spot Band-Aids with Mickey Mouse on them, but it was more than that, there was tissue tearing off him but not connected to him in the first place, shards of bone, like he was climbing out of what was left of his body, but he was -

Dean didn't get to finish the thought. He'd hardly got his top half free and tingling wet in cool bunker air when Sam blurted, "Oh my god."

Dean looked up, saw him standing in the doorway. Then Sam moved like he was about to tackle him off the bed, and Dean had to brace himself before he was wrapped up in a crushing hug that didn't hurt, despite the pained little grunt Sam let out when he hit.

Sam smelled good. So, so good. So much better than the slaughterhouse reek coming off Dean, kudos of his coating. Soap, piney, loamy forest, blood, relief. Even the exhaustion and stress smelled good.

Dean hugged him back, and buried his face in Sam's neck, sucking in massive lungfuls of him and reveling in being whole enough to do this.

It was just dawning on him that it was sort of weird he could smell Sam's relief when Sam pulled back.

"I'm sorry." Sam was smiling like a kid on Christmas who'd also just won the lottery, but his eyes were teary and his voice was thick. And, god, his cheekbones were really sharp. How much had taking care of Dean taken out of him? "I didn't know it would last that long, or be that hard, I'm not sure I would've - "

"What?" Dean interrupted, overburdened brain struggling to play catchup. Especially because talking made him realize that he _could_ talk. His tongue was back. It felt different than he thought it used to but maybe that was just because it had been so long since he had a normal, functioning tongue that didn't constantly hurt.

Maybe.

Dean reached up to his mouth, probing with his fingers. His teeth were back, but he was positive that these, at least, weren't what he'd had before. They seemed sharper, and there were just way too many, more than should be able to fit in his mouth, even, and some were almost needlelike.

The scars on his gums were gone.

Dean's heart was galloping in his chest, strong and healthy. But even that felt weird. He could swear there was more than one thing pumping away in there, in some kind of efficient, alien push-pull rhythm.

Sam was watching him, tears on his face, swallowing. Dean looked at him, and realized the room was dark but he could see just fine. He could see everything. His eyes felt huge and weird in their sockets. He went to blink and realized, with a skewing, disconnected feeling, that the lids that just flicked across his eyeballs had absolutely not been the normal set. What had used to be his only set. No, these were all clear and swept in from the sides.

With effort, Dean managed to blink normal. He was breathing hard, a thousand different flavors mosaicing themselves across his tongue, and something shivered along the lines of his neck, in his ribs, and he didn't even want to know what the fuck that was. Gills? Other mouths? He thought he could feel teeth but he kind of was losing it right now, so maybe he shouldn't trust his perceptions.

"What's wrong with me?" Dean demanded, voice raspy and panicked, and it was like clawing up out of his own grave and thinking Sam had sold his soul to yank him back all over again, except maybe even worse. "Sammy, what did you do?"

He reached to grab Sam's wrists, but Sam's hands were already on his shoulders, like he was trying to calm him down.

"It's okay," Sam assured him. "I just...I didn't know it would be like that, it didn't say it would be that...violent. I'm so sorry. I didn't...Dean, I'm so sorry. But it's all okay now, you're okay."

He just kept on repeating himself like that for a while, openly crying now. Dean could smell the saltwater and the regret and still that overwhelming relief even as he panted with anxiety and sensory overload. He probably would have been getting a migraine by now if he'd still been…

Been what? Human?

What the fuck did Sam _do_?

"We needed the Mark gone," Sam was telling him now, "and you couldn't die, or change into most things, Dean, I read - "

Dean wasn't listening. Left hand rubbing automatically up and down Sam's bicep to try and get him to calm down, he looked at his right arm, remnants of him plastered to it like Arizona roadkill baked into the asphalt. And he couldn't see the Mark. Couldn't even see a shadow of it.

He couldn't feel it, either. He couldn't hear it. But it was kind of like not being able to hear a song anymore because you were the one singing it now.

His skin was wrong. Even through the crust of blood and slime, he could see that. The veins traced out weird patterns and there was almost a shimmery quality to it, oil-slick iridescence flickering just under the surface. And there were lines at his joints, wrist and elbow, knuckles. Like he was segmented, wearing a carapace. He couldn't really see what was beneath but got the feeling of something dark and wet and pulsing.

He swallowed saliva gone sweet and harsh as rattlesnake venom, something up near his sinuses constricting.

"You made it through," Sam was saying. "You made it through and, Dean, it's _gone._ It's finally gone and it didn't even let Her out because the lock's not even broken, and...this...we can deal with this, we can figure it out."

Dean looked at Sam. He felt like he was moving in slow motion. He looked at the softest parts of Sam, the parts that had rotted away first on him, and he remembered the things he thought and felt when he was sick and Sam was holding him.

"It's okay."

Dean wanted him, and didn't know in what way. He didn't know what to tell him, inspiration gone with the fever. His legs were still wrapped up but he was afraid to look below his waist because nowhere on him felt right. His shoulder blades twitched with weight. New organs, sprouted in place of the ones he'd shed, hummed away inside him.

Distantly, he thought about how he'd have to clean up his cocoon. His corpse.

Sam smelled like blood. He looked pale, held himself like he hurt, and it wasn't just the sheer burnout of caring for Dean. Dean looked up at him, holding onto him with both hands now, Sam doing the same.

He wanted to ask what he was, but he wasn't sure that Sam even knew. That anybody knew. He felt like something that had only halfway pulled itself free from a biting, whirling chaos, something that wasn't supposed to exist here and now, something that might make a Leviathan look like a newborn baby in comparison.

"Sam," Dean said, because it had been so long since he could say his name. "Sammy."

Sam smiled at him, and squeezed his shoulders. Gauze rustled.

"Let's go get you something to eat."


End file.
